blacksmith Archive

Bespoke ironwork can complement an interior like very few other designed pieces. It has the added benefit of being both reassuringly traditional and at the cutting edge. Context is all. Richard and the team at Made by the Forge were commissioned to work with Senior interior Designer, Annie Harrison at the superbly named design company Run For the Hills; a London-based creative design house that exists in the space where graphics and interiors meet.

Named by ‘Design Et Al’ magazine as one of ‘The World’s Leading Design Names, 2018’, Run For The Hills enjoys a superb reputation and Made by the Forge collaborated with the design team fashioning bespoke ironwork for a very specific space. Specialising in the very best seafood from around the British Isles is CLAW (another great brand name). They have a take-away outlet in the city, near Liverpool Street station and have since opened the Carnaby Restaurant right behind Hamley’s on Kingly Street, Soho. CLAW can also be booked independently for festivals and events.

It’s there you’ll find Made by the Forge’s work, ranging from bespoke wall brackets for their lighting and bespoke hand made coat hooks.

If you have an idea Made by the Forge can take your bespoke designs and turn your imagination into handcrafted, wrought iron pieces which will add a certain rustic charm to any interior. Old fashioned spaces or contemporary places, iron just works.

In the words of the BQ website (www.bqlive.co.uk), “We celebrate and inspire entrepreneurship to help businesses succeed and grow…” There’s a really nice article on BQ written by Chris Middleton on Made by the Forge and our relationship with the Manufacturing Growth Programme. The programme is a government initiative that supports manufacturing businesses and identifies where improvements can be made. Have a read…

It’s always a great validation of our work at Made by the Forge (and to be honest, a great thrill) when one of our pieces gets media coverage. We’ve had our share of magazine exposure, and we’re very grateful for that publicity. But a few Wednesdays ago on Channel 4, we were lucky enough to have one of our leading lights featured in the clever and entertaining series Ugly House to Lovely Housewith George Clarke.

Our Farrier’s Cage Five Bar Long luminaire, designed by Anthony Dickens, hung decorously from the ceiling of a converted St. John ambulance station of all things. The filmmakers really showed off the piece shooting it from lots of different angles and in its first prominent shot, the Five Bar Long fills the frame albeit showing only four of the five lights.

It’s a very good feeling to have Made by the Forge associated with lifestyle programmes that point people at products that make for better interiors. The relevant episode, series two, episode two, is still viewable on the Channel 4 website until 24th November here:

In this modern, interconnected world of ‘Now!’ or even sooner, it pays to keep an eye on what the current groundswell of opinion is, what people are thinking and what’s trending. To us, a trend is an ephemeral thing, born fast and soon passed. But it pays to know what is currently of particular interest. Made by the Forge’s products have a timeless quality to them, built as they are to last a lifetime. Wrought ironwork has been taken up by contemporary consumers who recognise that authenticity and superior craft can bestow on – even the most humble product – a veneer of ‘cool’. Turning to a search engine of choice, I was surprised to see one aspect of ironwork poking its head above the parapet as a modern object of desire.

The definition of a balustrade is as follows; a railing supported by balusters, especially one forming an ornamental parapet to a balcony, bridge, or terrace. The elements of a balustrade are; the handrail and its parallel baserail; the spindles are the supporting rods attaching the rails and the extra supporting pillars are known as newel posts. To you and me, we call all that ‘a stair rail’.

Over the centuries, ironwork has been spectacularly wrought into ingenious designs (just visit Barcelona and let your eye wander up the frontage of buildings) and there doesn’t seem to be any limit on human imagination when it comes to decorative ironwork. At Made by the Forge, we favour simple lines and clean designs, an approach that has acquired the word ‘minimalist’. But whatever your preference, whatever your own unique design, we can make it a reality. Get creative!

Kitchen specialists and furniture designers par excellence, Martin Moore, share our philosophy and love of traditional, British-made handcrafted products. Yorkshire based for 42 years, their superbly made and beautifully finished work speaks for itself. In the Supplement to this month’s House and Garden magazine, one of their bespoke kitchens is featured and it’s a real beauty.

Set in a former church hall with lighting issues and great length but not width, the kitchen designer had to overcome a few not insignificant, practical hurdles. With a fusion of contemporary and traditional styles, Toni Silver’s elegant, informal design makes it a tremendous space for people to gather and not just one in which to prepare food. Made by the Forge was commissioned to handcraft the pan rack, which is fixed to the large mirror. As Toni says, “…the mirror is antique. So fixing a rack to it took on a special care and importance!”

It’s good to know that our classic ironwork fits in so well with such a contemporary kitchen. Clichés are clichés for a reason but it really is true that classics never go out of style. It’s also very satisfying to contribute to such a project and an honour to be associated with such a fine company whose work echoes our own passions and goals. To see the House & Garden Kitchen & Bathroom supplement article, July 2017, click here.

There is something extremely satisfying about robust, reliable shelving and a shelf’s best friend is what it’s supported by. Made by the Forge’s Forge Shelf Bracket is a product that conveys simplicity first and foremost. There is no tin it comes in but if it did, it does exactly what it says on it. It’s there to do a job, and once installed properly on a wall, it’ll take the heavy load.

There are few homes in the land that could not use a little more shelving. These durable and extremely strong brackets are made of solid wrought iron and despite their rustic simplicity, they are rather attractive and come with a choice of black or natural beeswax finish. They are handcrafted in bespoke sizes to perfectly match your choice of shelving.

So why not let this sturdy support inspire you to action? Space may have been Captain Kirk’s final frontier but for the rest of us, it’s at a premium. So save time, save space and reclaim that floor area, maximise that wall space and put up that shelf.

Prior to the industrial revolution, the humble blacksmith was installed at his forge in every country village throughout the land. His bread and butter trade was practical ironwork producing horse tack, farm tools and ploughs and in the less enlightened ages, swords and armour.

People soon started to employ the local smithy to make decorative objects that would adorn any home, objects that would be passed down the generations. And where does a blacksmith derive his inspiration for such objects? Out of the window.

Mother Nature features a near infinite range of shapes and forms but the most pleasing to the eye become the classics whose design weathers the years just like the iron they are made of. One such classic is the Ram’s Horn.

The pleasing curves leading to the sharpened tip is one of Made by the Forge’s signature pieces and can be found as a curtain pole finial (above shown in beeswax), a curtain hold back (below shown in matt black finish).

It is also the decorative centre to Chris Eckersley’s Standard Floor Lamp. It is extraordinary how a still powerful and classic design can be forged to compliment contemporary lighting and as a fusion of both past and present, it creates its own unique identity.

All of us in the U.K. have lived with wrought iron for most of our lives. It’s found everywhere. Ancient ironwork smashed into pleasing shapes, structures and intricate patterns is still with us, the march of time barely giving it a second glance. Wrought iron hangs up our bread boards, stores our wine, clads our ships and provides France with her most enduring icon.

The industrial revolution may have turned our heads towards the new mechanical means of production but handmade, handcrafted ironwork still holds an incomparable allure. In fact, in the 21st century, wrought ironwork and its blacksmiths have returned with some vigour as the desire for material permanence has trumped the built in obsolescence of the poorly made product.

The last commercial wrought ironworks factory closed in 1974 but despite this, the skill of ‘working’ iron (‘wrought’ is an archaic form of ‘worked’) is still with us and the products highly prized and appreciated for their quality. From the beauty of the Farrier’s Cage Six Circle Globe Chandelier to the humble handle, iron still just works.

As a small but dedicated-to-quality company, exposure in magazines and indeed any media is invaluable to us. Any opportunity to gain more publicity for the company increases our profile. It’s not all about business and sales though of course these are important. But mostly we care that as many people as possible be aware that these age-old traditional skills are still with us in our iPad, screen dominated world.

In November 2015, Made by the Forge was graced with a company profile in the rather beautifully designed newspaper-like magazine Warehouse Home which you can see here, (first column, fifth box down). The magazine exploits the relatively new market of converting spaces usually associated with the storage of products into living areas. So it was thrilling to be back in Warehouse Home’s pages again.

Beautiful photography and snappy prose are unified to give the reader a peek of that lifestyle experience that may only exist in a homes magazine but certainly seems more and more attainable. If that’s your goal, we can certainly help.

The Beehive is a hand-forged lamp using both traditional blacksmithing and modern metal forming techniques. The metal is hot forged and the edges hammered giving it a unique wavy line finish. The design is a result of Anthony Dickens’ continued exploration in creating contemporary forged metal products with Richard at Made by the Forge.

Previewed at the Heal’s Festival of Light in October, the Beehive Pendant is based on the classic layered beehive shape, finished with beeswax straight from the hive and given some individual character by Richard’s craftsmanship.

The Beehive range will launch in February both in Heal’s and on our own website. The design is available in seven distinct variations. Showcasing two of them here, there’s the Beehive-Three-Cluster, a group of touching bulbs (illustrated below); and the Beehive Five Line Chandelier (above) which subverts the classic circular luminaire with a line of lights.

All will be revealed in February and if minimalism is your goal then there’s a single Beehive pendant suspended from a ceiling rose or free standing, bulb-up on a table along with the larger pieces.